Ex-Pat Report (#1): Rick & Mary Floating Through Europe
By Rick Munden and Robert M. Katzman
The Situation: Rick and Mary Munden, residents of California for a quarter century, sold their house and car and gave away or disposed of almost everything else they had accumulated during that time so as to condense their life sufficiently to allow them to live their lives on a thirty-one foot sailboat. Both are now sixty years of age.
Prior to that period, the Mundens lived on another boat in the Caribbean for nine years, leaving the Chicago area via the Mississippi River, learning to operate their sailboat as they went along. They decided to return to the United States to have a child, who turned out to be Robert Munden.
When they felt Robert was ready to be on his own, and yearning to return to living their prior lives life on water, they bid him farewell, and left the USA in June, 2010, flying to The Netherlands and waited there to collect what few possessions they decided to keep, which they’d shipped from their old West Coast home.
Rick and I, who first met in 1961, on the South Side of Chicago when we were both eleven, will be making periodic reports on the minutia of what it’s like to shrink a shared life to a space smaller than a one-car garage. Ninety-nine per cent of anyone each of us knows, or doesn’t know, will never live a life like the one they have chosen. This new series of reports will examine the results of what others may consider to be an unobtainable fantasy.
We will probe, in detail, whom they meet, the problems they encounter—if any—with local governments, the weather, their boat, where they find supplies, the quality and availability of fresh food, how they make repairs, pleasures and frustrations, how they deal with illness if it occurs, how they communicate both locally and with the world, and whatever philosophical musings they, or I, may have about all of the above. All photos will be supplied by either Rick or Mary.   I have encouraged them to supply many, illuminating as many aspects of their existance as possible.  My personal hope is not to see panoramic vistas, but more of a written and visual diary of everyday life.
This the first report about their new life, as they gradually sail south-east through Europe, with the eventual goal of landing in The Mediterranean Sea before winter sets in later this year.
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Q.
I wonder what you guys do all day. Do you read, or explore the town or what?